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It wasn’t that Richard hadn’t given any thought to how COVID-19 might be impacting Jared’s new career in senior living management. He’d just been thinking about it completely wrongly.
In his defense, he’d been busy. Being Bighead’s RA (“Hang out with me through August and they’ll let me say you’re a doctor. But not the surgery type. I think.”) was supposed to have been about giving him space to mash 8+ years of brilliance into a 200-page 8.5”x11” paperback that nobody would ever read.
Then, on the first Friday of March, it had been announced that, as of the following Monday, all classes would be on-line, and of course Bighead had had no idea what that had meant, and so Richard had taken over getting the twenty seniors in Winter Quarter CS 393 “Machine Learning: Not Smarter Than Your Dog Yet, Maybe Smarter Than Your Cat,“ through their final projects and presentations, while Bighead’s actual TA took over his data structures classes.
It was only after the final Zoom PowerPoint presentation, “Bays and Bayes, Just for the Halibut?” that Richard realized that it had been – what? – three weeks since he and Jared had gotten together to not play Catan, and that a lot had happened in the world since.
So when Jared (finally!) called him that evening, Richard found himself blurting, “You’ve been laid off, haven’t you?” Because why would a retirement community on lockdown (Richard assumed) need a Life Enrichment Coordinator just now.
“Laid off? No…” then, “Could you give me a ride home from work? Nobody’s picking up from retirement communities.”
“Why not?” Richard asked, as a letter-writing campaign, followed by spots on local and cable news, and eventual testifying before congress again, organized itself in his brain. This time he’d wear interesting suspenders to seem jaunty, and maybe not sneakers.
“Because drivers don’t want to get sick and die,” said Jared.
- - - - - - -
Driving over to Sunset Season Perfect Living, it came to Richard that he didn’t want to get sick and die either. Would it be rude of him to ask Jared to roll down the window? Or ride on the roof?
So that was the first thing out of his mouth as Jared slid all 8’9” of his body into Richard’s new-to-him Prius. “Would it be rude of me to ask you to ride on the roof?”
“I don’t have covid.”
“Do you capitalize the whole word when you say it?”
“No. Not even the first letter. We’re past that.”
“If you say so,” said Richard. “How do you know?”
“About the capitalization?”
“About the not having covid.” Yes, lower case was better.
“Because I had it already. Have had it. Not bad, and they say you’re not infectious if you haven’t had a fever for three days.”
“Ummmm…”
“104. I thought I was Lady Gaga.”
“Ummmm…”
“They confined me one of the stand-alone units. It being newly available. Fortunately I couldn’t get enough breath to sing very loudly.”
“Ummmm…”
Jared rolled his window down. “Could you just take me home please.”
And now Richard had ‘Bad Romance’ playing in his head as he turned out of the parking lot. “You okay really?” Jared looked – like Jared.
“No,” said Jared, “I’m really not.”
That wasn’t the answer Richard had expected. Having no clue what to do with it, he drove.
Loafers. If he ever testified before congress again he’d wear loafers.
What was a loafer, exactly?
“People are really sick,” Jared said. “People are dying.”
Richard swallowed. “I… Ummmm… You should have called me.”
If Jared had died, he’d have worn loafers to the memorial service.
Shit, he’d probably have had to PLAN the service.
Or would it have been a Zoom thing? In which case shoes wouldn’t have mattered. Or pants. But he’d have worn pants. Maybe not good pants.
“Don’t take this badly,” said Jared, “But you’d have been completely useless.”
Richard didn’t respond as he steered onto 82, and then off again, then into Jared’s condo development.
“You’re taking that badly,” said Jared. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Thanks for the ride.”
Maybe five years ago, maybe five MONTHS ago – okay, five months before they’d been somewhere in Europe? – ANYWAY, until very recently he’d have been – very angry right now.
“Not completely useless,” he finally said.
“Completely. Useless.”
“Sorry.”
“Yeah,” said Jared.
“So you’re quitting?”
“My job? No!” said Jared. “I love my job! And now that I’ve had covid I can be super-useful! I just – need to sleep. For a week. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll bring dinner tomorrow. Or lunch. Is there food in your place?”
Jared smiled, and Richard felt tears well, which was hella weird. “I’ll text you a list when I wake up tomorrow.”
* * * THE END * * *